Not that NHL teams necessarily want to but even the Stanley Cup champions for each season can’t keep their teams completely intact. It can’t happen in the era of the hard salary cap, even as it has crept up to $73 million for the upcoming 2016-17 season.

Players come up for new contracts – especially good, young contributors – and particularly cap-strapped teams often face tough decisions on whom to keep and whom to move for financial relief and flexibility.

A new layer of tough calls must be made now that Las Vegas has been approved to become the NHL’s 31st team and an expansion draft will be conducted next summer so the Black Knights/Aces/Gamblers/Whatevers will be ready to take the ice for 2017-18.

And NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is determined for this team to competitive right out of the gate. The other 30 teams will only get to protect a handful of players – either seven forwards, three defensemen and a goalie or eight skaters and a goalie.

Below is the full list of expansion draft rules set out by the league. What it means for the Ducks is that a quality player they may really want to keep is not going to be on their roster and there won’t be anything they can do about it.

Teams, for instance, must protect those with no-movement clauses. So that means the Ducks must protect Ryan Getzlaf, Corey Perry, Ryan Kesler and Kevin Bieksa if they remain on their roster – which we’ll assume will be the case unless one is somehow traded – when they submit their list on June 17, 2017.

There’s no debate on the goalie as it will be John Gibson, with Frederik Andersen now in Toronto and moved partly so the Ducks could get what they wanted for him. Things get dicey beyond that.

The Ducks must decide which is more important, protecting an extra defenseman or three more forwards. Hampus Lindholm and Sami Vatanen should be locks for protection and that’s three defensemen with Bieksa. Clayton Stoner and Simon Despres, even though he’s just 24, can be exposed. Despres has to come back from a concussion-plagued 2015-16 season.

But what about Josh Manson, who’s cheap, already solid and still on the upswing as a player? And there is Cam Fowler. If Fowler isn’t dealt by the Ducks, whether at the draft or sometime during the season, do you look at protecting him instead?

Protecting either keeps a solid, young core intact as Shea Theodore and Brandon Montour are exempt and can’t be claimed. Doing that, however, allows the Ducks to protect only one other forward.

Rickard Rakell would be that forward. He’s their only high-skilled young scorer that’s made an impact in the NHL. The Ducks don’t have too many locked up beyond the Big Three and they don’t need to worry about Nick Ritchie being exposed but they do have Jakob Silfverberg and Andrew Cogliano, valuable wingers who aren’t one-dimensional.

There is also center Nate Thompson but he’s a fourth-liner that’ll be coming off a second straight major injury and an unrestricted free agent next summer. A good player with a locker room presence but replaceable. But the prospect of losing Silfverberg or Cogliano is very real, especially if the Ducks go with protecting another defender.

Silfverberg ($3.75-million salary cap hit) and Cogliano ($3 million cap hit) have term left on their contracts so opening up a salary slot might be advantageous for the budget-minded Ducks but losing a helpful player that’s been part of consistent playoff teams will leave some hurt.

Maybe this Las Vegas team doesn’t choose either. But it has to spend at least $43.8 million on drafted players and 20 of those must be under contract for 2017-18. And with GM Bob Murray’s emphasis on defense, there is a good chance that the Ducks will go with the eight-skater protection approach.

Be prepared to see the hard-working Silfverberg potentially score 20 goals or the equally hard-working Cogliano set the NHL’s all-time consecutive games record with the Black Knights/Aces/Gamblers/Whatevers.

It won’t be a total loss for the Ducks. Owners Henry and Susan Samueli are going to make out with $16,666,667 million of Bill Foley’s $500 million expansion fee. So there’s that.

Here are the expansion draft rules, as provided by the NHL:

Protected Lists

* Clubs will have two options for players they wish to protect in the Expansion Draft:

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